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hypnosec writes "Stephen Hawking's ability to communicate has been deteriorating over the years and as it stands, he is only able to communicate at the rate of 1 word per minute. Intel CTO Justin Rattner has revealed that they are working on an interface that will boost the scientist's speech to up to 10 words per minute. Beyond twitching his cheek, Hawking is also capable of other voluntary facial expressions which can be tapped to achieve faster communications with the help of a better character interface and a better word predictor."

Please tell me you are joking. The reason why I advocate more people buy AMD is because frankly X86 has gotten so incredibly powerful on BOTH sides of the aisle that I think its more important to have competition than to win some benchmark and the difference is like going from insaneo speed to ludicrous speed.

I mean look at some of the chips both have been putting out, even 7 years ago you would have had to spend just insane amounts of money to get anywhere near this performance and now you can get these sub 20w CPUs with multiple cores and GPUs that do full 1080p? Honestly people really need to take a moment to just stop and appreciate how fucking GOOD we have it right now. Hell even the Atom chip when paired with ION made for a pretty decent HTPC that used less power than a first gen P4 doing nothing, now Intel puts out these chips that just get totally incredible amounts of IPC and at an average of only 55w? That is just crazy, hell my Pentium D used more than that just sitting on the fricking desktop doing nothing.

So I would say if anything the slowdown in PC sales and the reason i recommend AMD is because Intel upped the game so damned high that even a low end chip is like a top fuel funny car and just blows through any job your average user can come up with without breaking a sweat. If Intel wouldn't have kept raising the bar with the tick tock cycle I wouldn't be able to buy 6 core CPUs for just $100 or get my customers damned nice laptops for less than $500 delivered.

The amount of power we get today just blows my mind and if you would have told me a decade ago I'd be typing on a website while listening to music, burning a DVD and doing a transcode and NOTHING would lag? Yeah I'd tell you to go back to your Star trek fanfic but here we are, where even the lowest laptop can do 1080P and multitask like crazy and our desktops are just monsters. I predict in 3 years, maybe less, we'll see ARM peter out as they aren't able to scale the IPC while Intel will just scale down a Core2 to where it uses like 2w max and runs rings around the ARM, it'll be like having a supercomputer in your pocket, just incredible.

Yes, the x86 tech has improved a lot.However, the intel presentation at CES was empty. They presented a facelift of the same chip with stuff limited, and made false claims on it.The competition (x86 or not) is not sleeping like that. intel needs to wake up if they want to survive.

Yes, the x86 tech has improved a lot.
However, the intel presentation at CES was empty. They presented a facelift of the same chip with stuff limited, and made false claims on it.
The competition (x86 or not) is not sleeping like that. intel needs to wake up if they want to survive.

Have you been smoking what Charlie Demerjian is selling? Intel has a huge lead over their closest competitor, AMD. Since AMD resigned its-self to the value market a few years ago they have not even attempted to take a shot at leading. Intel has no immediate threats, unfortunately.

I agree with your views. A cheap, low wattage AMD chip is plenty fast and makes modern OS's go fast. Problem is Intel's stuff is at LEAST a little better, cheaper and lower wattage.
If you can save money with an AMD chip, invest in an SSD as well. As far as I'm concerned that is going to make a desktop snappy almost regardless of (modern) processor. If you haven't used one before you don't know how slowly you've been using your system even if you have a top end Intel.

The reason I don't advocate Intel, well besides the douchebag compiler rigging and bribery they should have gotten an anti-trust bust for, is that they cripple their chips and moreover they cripple them WRONG. I mean cutting out POWERSAVING features on the lower end chips? Really? You have cache and HT and VM support you can cut, that isn't enough but you gotta make them laptop chips into pigs when you have so many other ways to upsell?

And I have to completely disagree that Intel chips are cheaper and lowe

Exactly, you got me interested in the E series chips, before I was 100% intel, because that was what we used at the office and I just grabbed the old stuff. Now I have an E-450, two E-350s, and two C-60's. (People tend to hate on the C60, but it works well within its limits.) Only problem is that I tend to buy used off eBay and the AMD section is often limited.

I don't know why anybody would hate on the C60, its frankly a kick ass netbook or mini-PC chip and when I couldn't find an E350 for my dad's GF year before last I found him an Acer with a C60 to give her and she just loves the hell out of the thing, like with my E350 EEE she has no intention of getting rid of it and why should she? Unlike the crippled Atom systems the C and E series support a ton of RAM (she has 4GB on hers, I went ahead and slapped 8GB in my E350) and have full VM support as well as does 1

The beauty of computers is without a sense of context, the conceptual difficulty of hardcore physics vs urban dictionaries sailor slurs would be completely irrelevant to it. So your probably right actually.

Instead of rehashing 1970s tech, could we PLEASE start understanding how the human body works and why some bodies destroy themselves in this way?

Could you PLEASE stop assuming that there aren't thousands upon thousands of people actively engaged in all areas of medical science trying to do exactly this?

Could you please explain why one of the most brilliant men of all time is sitting in a 70's era wheel chair using a fucking joystick and his cheek to try and type words when we already have EEG-based headcaps that fucking MONKEYS can use to play goddamn video games?Seriously man, quit making excuses. Biomedical technology for the disabled is at least 30 years behind CONSUMER technology and at least 50 years behind where it should be. He ought to be walking around his house in a thought- controlled, self-powered exoskeleton right now, and no I'm not joking for even a second. At the very least he should have a head-cap based interface for using his computer system instead of a half-assed muscle-proxy mechanism. And that's with shit that's damn near available at WalMart, no fucking joke.The state of actual medical research to fix conditions like his is in just as sorry of a state. Companies are too busy pouring cash into penis pills and weight loss drugs to spend R&D money on tailoring targeted DNA rejuvenation treatments. No, it's not just Sci-Fi, or rather it ought not to be, but assholes like you act like this is being feverishly worked on around the clock when in reality nobody is doing a GODDAMN THING.

The state of actual medical research to fix conditions like his is in just as sorry of a state. Companies are too busy pouring cash into penis pills and weight loss drugs to spend R&D money on tailoring targeted DNA rejuvenation treatments. No, it's not just Sci-Fi, or rather it ought not to be, but assholes like you act like this is being feverishly worked on around the clock when in reality nobody is doing a GODDAMN THING.

Two points: (1) Do you claim to have a solution that can be implemented? (2) What are YOU doing about curing the diseasse?

I know it is fun to sit at home and bash medical R&D of focusing on weight-loss pills etc. But look at the statistics. About 5000 people in the US have ALS at any given time (and death rate is close to incidence rate of 2/100,000 per year: Citation [cwfo.org]). So in the US (300 million population) that is 6000 deaths a year. Do you know how many people die due to obesity? Automobile accidents? Heart disease? ALS doesn't even count compared to those: Rank of causes of death.

Just so you know, I would love cures for a lot of diseases to be found (including ALS). But in the real world, companies focus on what makes business sense. Why should the NIH grants/Medical R&D focus on ALS when there are a lot more deaths due to other causes? Because one person who has it is famous? I'm sure there are a lot of smart/famous people (okay, may not be Stephen Hawking type of smart, but talented and contributing to society in other ways) who die of lots of other causes. We don't live entirely in a meritocracy that says Famous Guy's life is worth more than everyone else's and is therefore more deserving of resources.

I could make an argument that obesity is self induced. Auto accidents are mostly due to stupidity, in which one stupid person takes himself and a random number of victims out. Heart disease is often due to self induced obesity.

GP may have a point, in that we should cure those diseases that are not self induced, before worrying about dumbasses who work hard to kill themselves. How much money went into all that penis hardening research, anyway? Every single dollar was a total waste. We don't NEED more ol

That it is. It may be rooted in psychological causes both genetic, environmental and acquired, but it is (almost) never the result of someone else force-feeding you, so any and all motivation and incentive have to come from yours truly and nobody else.

Oh, and coming down from semi-obesity isn't all that hard (unless you're in a hurry). In the past year I've come down from 150+ kg to 96 kg today over the course of 13 months doing nothing more than eating at least one healthy meal each day (usually a 500g mix

But in the real world, companies focus on what makes business sense. Why should the NIH grants/Medical R&D focus on ALS when there are a lot more deaths due to other causes?

Actually, a lot of the basic biomedical and technological groundwork that would be required to treat a condition like ALS using the science-fiction fantasies of the GP would be immensely profitable. If we could really understand how stimuli get in and out of the brain, and come up with neural-computer interfaces that not only restor

1. Stephen Hawking is British. We in the UK have a healthcare system that doesn't bankrupt people unlucky enough to have degenerative and terminal illnesses. Obamacare is irrelevant, but on that note you're a fool if you think any steps towards social healthcare are a bad idea and that the US' current mercenary healthcare system is good for anyone but insurance companies.

2. If you and the dimwitted GP could think of repurposing available tech, why do you assume that engineers at one of the bigge

Your're talking about what monkeys get and such, but i'm pretty sure what Stephen Hawking wants, Stephen Hawking gets. If it were possible currently, he would have it if he wanted it.
Also, of course companies put money into what they can get out of it, penis pills and such, otherwise they wouldn't be companies! If you want something better, start lobbying your damn government to take it up and increase your taxes!
Companies are for profit, because they are businesses need to repay their shareholders, ot

What never ceases to amaze me is how we treat such brilliant people. I was surprised to hear how old his equipment is, how difficult it is to keep running, and how little his personal assistants are paid.

I understand he is not a rich man and caretaking is naturally expensive, but I would have expected more goodwill sponsors to come forward, if only for publicity's sake.

Hawking is fairly conservative with his tech. As another post said, working is the primary requirement, even if slow. Remember, a FUBARd system is no use no matter how cool or fast it worked in the lab.

Besides, Hawking has a nice media career going for himself: http://youtu.be/tOimeRod4TY [youtu.be] (yes, it really Hawking help sell financial products!).

There are plenty of companies that would quite willingly give him their tech and 24/7 customer support, gratis. Intel has been such a "sponsor" of Hawking for years. However, because this technology must work for him all the time, and because he can't spend his days trying to learn the latest new-fangled thing you want him to try, he himself is slow to adopt new technology. Having a computer freeze up is bad enough for most folks. For him it means he is stranded and speechless until someone checks in on

Remember when he was taking applications for an assistant a while back? One of the requirements was that the individual would be able to repair his tech on-the-spot. Not just replace a keyboard, but do a teardown and get it back up and running again. That's another pretty good reason for him to stick with the tech he's had around for years. They can train the new people as they come in, and you're not playing catchup with new tech.

Could you please explain why one of the most brilliant men of all time is sitting in a 70's era wheel chair using a fucking joystick and his cheek to try and type words when we already have EEG-based headcaps that fucking MONKEYS can use to play goddamn video games?

Because you're too busy wasting your life bitching about what hasn't been achieved by society while doing fuck all to sort it yourself. It's pretty pathetic so sort your shit out.

Could you please explain why one of the most brilliant men of all time is sitting in a 70's era wheel chair using a fucking joystick and his cheek to try and type words

There are several reasons. One of the biggest reasons, which is also the reason space probes have seemingly antiquated computing power, is that it has to work. EEG-based headcaps for playing video games is great, but how good is the fidelity? How good does it do when you need to be able to use it 24/7? Face it: most consumer electronics

Seriously man, quit making excuses. Biomedical technology for the disabled is at least 30 years behind CONSUMER technology and at least 50 years behind where it should be.

Designing general-purpose silicon-based microelectronics technology from the ground up is vastly easier (and currently, vastly more profitable) than deducing the function of an organic, naturally evolved, and vastly more sophisticated neural system. The fact that you would make such a comparison proves that you don't know a fucking thing

Notes:
- these are only two papers that made it into the public media in recent times
- it is a very conservative estimation to assume that each one of them involved the work of tens of peoples
- it is also safe to assume that there are many others that are still "pushing the boundaries of Knowledge" on the matter but are not enough "media-chewable" so they never reach the notoriously sloppy AC's attention

If you were a very smart fellow in the 1800's with nothing but the most rudimentary knowledge of electricity, how would you go about understanding something like a portable radio transistor?

Would you have advised the people in the 1700's to just stop thinking about electricity because they lacked fundamental understanding of it? How would that have brought us to where we are now?

Do you think it would be possible to understand the human brain without computers (the cognitive models but especially the computing power needed for modeling) and electronic microscopes? Do you think it would be possible to build computers and electronic microscopes without a deep understanding of electronics (among other things)? And do you think we could get a deep understanding of electronics without the first crude experimentation with naturally occurring and static electricity?

Sure, someone that would write a paper now on how a radio works by reversing engineering the circuit board without understanding the first notions of electronics is an idiot and would be duly ridiculed in the literature. An "inventor" from the 1700's who did experiments with rubbing amber or flying kites into the storm was a genius, someone doing it now would be an amateur at best.

You got modded down I believe because you made the ridiculous assertion that there is already a cure for ALS-- legalizing marijuana! And that people just refuse to accept it. I assure you that if cannabis was the cure for ALS that so much money would not have been spent helping Hawking cope with ALS rather than just curing him.

One might ask where exactly you got your PHD, and why you havent gotten a government grant yet.

Apparently you have no clue what is required to get a grant, let alone a licence to, conduct research on cannabis in canada. It's actually easier in the states, ironic since they're the worldwide cause of the illegality of cannabis. Anyways, even if you get a licence you either get schwag sprayed with thc from the US government, or a new canadian synthetic blend of thc and some other compounds. Either way, you lose out on the complex interactions between thc, cbds, cbns. If you weren't in the know, CBD'

As an anecdotal aside. I have used it to treat arthritis, restore my eyesight, and restore movement to nerve damaged areas (degenerative nerve disorders run in my family). However, like I said, it requires directed awareness. You can't rewire something without knowing where to run the wire or where to connect it to.

Ill agree with you, and look at my nick. There is much to be done in the medical world concerning marijuana. I believe it is a great medicine and has the potential to be a cure, or at least helpful for many diseases. but my hopes and thoughts are no replacement for medical research. Yes we have come a long way, and yes we can say for sure that marijuana does have medicinal value. but we are not in the clear just yet, there is a lot more to go.

Instead of rehashing 1970s tech, could we PLEASE start understanding how the human body works and why some bodies destroy themselves in this way? It would be FAR cooler to have a molecule that goes in there and repairs this damage. Atoms arranged THEMSELVES into working nerves once, they can do it again.

Is this too complex for us as a species? What happened to the "we choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard" spirit?

Hey, we didn't know that was so important to you, or of course, we would've ''got 'er done'' for you already. So, all you need is a 'magic' atom, huh? I'll get right on that for you. Figure it'll get done by Tuesday for ya'.

Okay, 'Molecule' is the word the poster used. He wants a magic molecule or something that would magically fix problems in a human body. And he wants it yesterday. Modern medicine is good nowadays, but it's not 'that' good, yet. I want a flying car NOW already! Doesn't mean I'm getting what I want when I want it. That's all I was saying.

I would suggest that you're looking at the problem incorrectly though. The atoms did not arrange themselves into nerves, etc, all by themselves. You've simply leaped past a couple of very critical things, like viable DNA donors, cooperating to create yet more healthy, viable DNA.

Hell, if all that were required were a bunch of atoms, we could take hydrocarbons almost at random, throw them in a blender, and wait for a child to birth itself

Somewhat ironic you choose to post a provocative style message as AC. Did you choose to do so because it was easy, and not hard?;-)Re: "could we please start understanding how the human body works" - I think you'll find that there are many research institutions and universities carrying out a lot of biological research. Why don't answers appear quickly? Because it's hard. A good friend has just finished his PhD studying Huntingdon's disease, he has made some valuable but incremental progress to solving gen

Isn't it a little awesome that he has become a (general) idol? I mean, everyone cries out that the current celebrity culture is terrible, and yet here we have a man who is everything everyone should aspire to, despite terrible adversity, and he is in popular TV shows, doing adverts. Isn't that a good thing? I am glad that we are moving on and people who in the past would only be icons for the geeky, or those in the field can become icons for everyone, because it means we are focusing on better things in people.

I respectfully disagree, at least in part. Sure, the public admires him because he absolutely refuses to give up, in spite of disease that would have made most people surrender long before now. I respect him for that.

But to be fair, Hawking had already made a name for himself long before he landed in that wheelchair -- starting with the Adams Prize for his doctoral thesis (back in 1966). He's not just winging it or banking on public sympathy. He and Roger P

Or they could get Hawking one of these. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotiv_Systems [wikipedia.org] A brain computer interface that is available to consumers already. With it they could give him a means of communication even if he loose what little control of his body he has left

After meeting with Hawking, Rattner said he wondered whether his company’s processor technology could restore the scientist’s ability to communicate at five words per minute, or even increase that rate to 10.

A business person would probably have left and said, "boring conversation anyway"

A quick Youtube search turns up this example of eye-tracking tech for character input [youtube.com]. Yeah, it doesn't look to be much faster than Intel's proposed 10 words per minute but that clip is 5 years old and I'm sure it could be improved upon in a number of ways (instead of having to 'hover' over a key for couple seconds for it to confirm, maybe a twitch could be used instead).

Only the other day we saw a demonstration of eye tracking being used with the Windows 8 interface. Something like that would allow him to browse the web, email, take notes, etc.

Oh, and add decent predictive text like modern smartphone soft-keyboards have too. I think I remember reading that his current system has some form of predictive text but I'm guessing it's pretty dated.

There is also the option of using Dasher. [cam.ac.uk] You only need four controls: up, down and forward and back. The program shows a tree of the possible options, emphasizing more frequent words. You can write "the" by just looking at "t" and then at the "h e" that appear. This is pretty intuitive with eye-tracking, more so than a keyboard.

I'm glad they can increase Hawking's speech rate by an order of magnitude, but that's a lot of work to accommodate people like Hawking: those with ALS that live more than 10 years. I think only 1% of ALS patients live past 10 years. Hawking has lived 50+ years with ALS, which makes him an incredibly rare case.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and thoughWe are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

It is not enough to have the ability to change the world. It is a rare combination of chance and circumstance, far more than any particular genius. Archimedes could not have formulated the questions that led to quantum electrodynamics. Nor is it fair to select a particular point of inflection out of a continuum of progress -- which discovery since the invention of the transistor is responsible for the processor in your computer?

You judge beyond your ken, and far above your station. I hope that you are ashamed of your comment, but console myself that it will likely receive all the attention that it deserves.

Not the parent, but I think you misunderstand the concept of poetry. You need individual examples to be inspiring. A poem about the faceless masses of scientist wouldn't be very inspiring to most people.

A poem about the faceless masses of scientists might be inspiring...if written by a talented poet...which was kinda what the person you were replying to was saying about Hawking's ability to communicate ideas and formulate questions. Sheesh.

Give me a break. It fails tests of Godel - and is based on a mathematical supposition of unobservable, multiple dimensions. It's like adding new axes to a graph - to fit non-conforming data into a pre-determined hypothesis.

It is a sophomoric proposition illuminated by calculative sophistication. Wittgenstein, were he alive, would have ripped Hawking seven new assholes, and been mathematically correct in his exposition.

"false" is not the issue, that is from the realm of philosophy and of no import. a scientific model is USEFUL for predicting behaviour of natural phenomenon or it is NOT USEFUL. there are several quantum mechanical models that are very useful. you are presently using devices engineered with useful quantum mechanical models. scientific experiment has shown other quantum mechanical models to be useful.

Interestingly, there have been recent astronomic observations in the realm of the intersection of quant